From one photography collector to another: a venue for thoughtful discussion of vintage and contemporary photography via reviews of recent museum exhibitions, gallery shows, photography auctions, photo books, art fairs and other items of interest to photography collectors large and small.

Monday, May 13, 2013

Photography in the 2013 Frieze New York Art Fair, Part 5 of 5

Part 1 of this five-part Frieze report can be found here. Start there for introductory background and explanatory notes.

ProjecteSD (here): Jochen Lempert, €7000. A simple, well executed exercise in dappled light, leafy shadow, and shimmering all over movement.

Altman Siegel (here): Sara VanDerBeek, $16000. While VanDerBeek's Metro Pictures show is already in my review queue, this elegant tilted sculptural interpretation isn't part of that exhibit. The skewed frame aligns with the angles of the arms and offsets the verticality of the subject.

Sprüth Magers (here): Thomas Demand, €75000. Indoor plants in fancy modern planters for a windowless office are already an odd creation, but when they are abstracted even further into cut-paper constructions by Demand, controlled nature becomes even more artificial.

Team Gallery (here): Ryan McGinley, $50000. This whole booth was filled with recent large scale McGinley nudes, with young men and women in various states of falling, lying, and running around. This nighttime mix of fire and water is certainly dramatic and full of exuberance, like some secret ritual.

Murray Guy (here): Zoe Leonard, $25000. This booth had a selection of mid-1990s animal images by Leonard, taken during a multi-year stay in Alaska. While the animals were hunted by the artist, the images have the feel of taxidermy or staged diorama, but with an edge of rawness.

White Cube (here): Jeff Wall, $450000. This was the only work by Wall I saw at Frieze, a small backyard study of poppies and scrubby greenery.